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5 Cool Wireless Reseach Projects
Bob B writes "Including an effort by MIT researchers to exploit dense urban networks of existing Wi-Fi access points to create municipal wireless networks rather than relying on EarthLink and cities to fund and build such wireless projects. Secure tunneling is the secret sauce for making it work and not making wireless AP owners liable for miscreants who might use the bandwidth, the researchers say."
This might ( most likely does ) violate most any ISP's eula. That also has to be dealt with as they want their cut too.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If a story looks like a dup to me, I just don't read it. On the other hand, slashdot's completely broken moderation forces me to read everything, unless I want to miss some really good posts. So if they were going to fix anything, I'd say moderation is where to put the effort, priority #1.
As for the story, someone has to provide access to the net. Distributing it so that people get it from wifi puts the load - and the bill - on the people with the connections. As long as the Internet pipes are a commercial traffic system, unlike the highways, which are taxpayer funded (via the gas taxes, to some degree) traffic systems, "free" access always devolves upon one set of private individuals, for the benefit of others. That's fine if you feel like donating, but as we know from the history of downloading music, the ratio of freeloaders to voluntary payers is horrific and the payers take the majority of the load.
I'm of the mind that like the highways, data "highways" have turned out to be essential to commerce, education and communications - and because of this, the government should manage them with an equally-shared tax among the citizens; and since unlike the highways, the intertubes don't wear out proportional to traffic, bandwidth should not be a significant factor. Our (meaning, the US) network structure should be rebuilt to carry about a million times what it carries now anyway, and removing it from the private sector seems like a good time to get that done. Probably cost a few days of "Iraq war equivalent funding." (that's hand waving, but surely, we could afford it.)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Seconded, I volunteer at a small elementary school with a one to one laptop program just a couple blocks from a major university, and interference effects are becoming more and more of a problem. Last I counted I could see something like 15-20 APs in one of the classrooms, and while sitting on the school's wireless network in that room you are guaranteed to lose all signal at least once an hour. This is obviously a problem, but moreover a dropped connection when using one of the network based programs (such as FASTT Math) results in the user being knocked out of that program, right now I don't see this technology being employed easily in a wifi dense setting until this problem of interference is dealt with.
Registered Linux User #423733
The paper describes outfitting such devices as the handheld computers used by first responders with elements dubbed a "device root key" and a "storage root hash" to enable temporary access to information.
I think this idea needs to be pursued. Having immediate but temporary access to need-to-know info such as medical history, contact phone numbers, and even a programmable access card for building (apt or condo) access to respond to 911 calls would be excellent.
The temporary, secure design would reduce the risk (or just the fear) of having first responders abuse the info (i.e. using a 'universal' key card to access a building during a non-emergency. As a first responder I know time would be saved if I could enter a building during a call without needing to enter buzz codes, etc, but I don't want to have the responsibility of universal access.
Expanding the system to share location/status of first responders/patients/threats/etc, along with live-updated info from the control centre would be very valuable.